Cotton and race in the making of America : the human costs of economic power, Gene Dattel

The Resource Cotton and race in the making of America : the human costs of economic power, Gene Dattel

Cotton and race in the making of America : the human costs of economic power, Gene Dattel

Resource Information

The item Cotton and race in the making of America : the human costs of economic power, Gene Dattel represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Cedar Rapids Public Library-Metro Library Network.

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"For more than 130 years, from the early nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth, cotton was the leading export crop of the United States. And the connection between cotton and the African-American experience became central to the history of the republic. America's most serious social tragedy, slavery and its legacy, spread only where cotton could be grown. Both before and after the Civil War, and well into the twentieth century, blacks were relegated to work the cotton fields. Their social and economic situation was aggravated by a pervasive racial animosity and fear of a black migratory invasion that caused white Northerners to contain blacks in the South. Gene Dattel's pioneering study explores the historical roots of these central social issues. In telling detail, Mr. Dattel shows why the vastly underappreciated story of cotton is a key to understanding America's rise to economic power. When cotton production exploded to satiate the nineteenth-century textile industry's enormous appetite, it became the first truly complex global business and a driving force in U.S. territorial expansion and sectional economic integration. It propelled New York City to commercial preeminence and fostered independent trade between Europe and the United States, providing export capital for the new nation to gain its financial "sea legs." And without slave-produced cotton, the South could never have initiated the Civil War, America's bloodiest conflict. Cotton continued to exert a powerful influence on both the American economy and race relations in the years after the Civil War. Mr. Dattel's skillful historical analysis identifies the commercial forces that cotton unleashed and the pervasive nature of racial antipathy it produced. This is a story that has never been told in quite the same way before, related here with the authority of a historian with a profound knowledge of international finance." --Publisher's description

"For more than 130 years, from the early nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth, cotton was the leading export crop of the United States. And the connection between cotton and the African-American experience became central to the history of the republic. America's most serious social tragedy, slavery and its legacy, spread only where cotton could be grown. Both before and after the Civil War, and well into the twentieth century, blacks were relegated to work the cotton fields. Their social and economic situation was aggravated by a pervasive racial animosity and fear of a black migratory invasion that caused white Northerners to contain blacks in the South. Gene Dattel's pioneering study explores the historical roots of these central social issues. In telling detail, Mr. Dattel shows why the vastly underappreciated story of cotton is a key to understanding America's rise to economic power. When cotton production exploded to satiate the nineteenth-century textile industry's enormous appetite, it became the first truly complex global business and a driving force in U.S. territorial expansion and sectional economic integration. It propelled New York City to commercial preeminence and fostered independent trade between Europe and the United States, providing export capital for the new nation to gain its financial "sea legs." And without slave-produced cotton, the South could never have initiated the Civil War, America's bloodiest conflict. Cotton continued to exert a powerful influence on both the American economy and race relations in the years after the Civil War. Mr. Dattel's skillful historical analysis identifies the commercial forces that cotton unleashed and the pervasive nature of racial antipathy it produced. This is a story that has never been told in quite the same way before, related here with the authority of a historian with a profound knowledge of international finance." --Publisher's description

Cataloging source

DLC

http://library.link/vocab/creatorName

Dattel, Eugene R

Dewey number

338.1/73510975

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

E441

LC item number

.D237 2009

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

http://library.link/vocab/subjectName

Slavery

Cotton growing

Cotton growing

Plantation life

African Americans

United States

United States

Slavery

United States

United States

Label

Cotton and race in the making of America : the human costs of economic power, Gene Dattel

pt. 1: Slavery in the making of the Constitution. The silent issue at the Constitutional Convention -- pt. 2: The engine of American growth, 1787-1861. Birth of an obsession -- Land expansion and white migration to the Old Southwest -- The movement of slaves to the cotton states -- The business of cotton -- The roots of war -- pt. 3: The north: for whites only, 1800-1865. Being free and black in the North -- The colonial North -- Race moves west -- Tocqueville on slavery, race, and money in America -- pt. 4: King Cotton buys a war. Cultivating a crop, cultivating a strategy -- Great Britain and the Civil War -- Cotton and Confederate finance -- Procuring arms -- Cotton trading in the United States -- Cotton and the freedman -- pt. 5: The racial divide and cotton labor, 1865-1930. New era, old problems -- Ruling the freedmen in the cotton fields -- Reconstruction meets reality -- The black hand on the cotton boll -- From cotton field to urban ghetto : the Chicago experience -- pt. 6: Cotton without slaves, 1865-1930. King Cotton expands -- The controlling laws of cotton finance -- The delta plantation : labor and land -- The planter experience in the twentieth century -- The long-awaited mechanical cotton picker -- The abdication of King Cotton

Control code

ocn300462565

Dimensions

25 cm.

Extent

xiv, 416 p.

Isbn

9781566637473

Isbn Type

(cloth : alk. paper)

Lccn

2009001342

Other physical details

ill.

System control number

(OCoLC)300462565

Label

Cotton and race in the making of America : the human costs of economic power, Gene Dattel

pt. 1: Slavery in the making of the Constitution. The silent issue at the Constitutional Convention -- pt. 2: The engine of American growth, 1787-1861. Birth of an obsession -- Land expansion and white migration to the Old Southwest -- The movement of slaves to the cotton states -- The business of cotton -- The roots of war -- pt. 3: The north: for whites only, 1800-1865. Being free and black in the North -- The colonial North -- Race moves west -- Tocqueville on slavery, race, and money in America -- pt. 4: King Cotton buys a war. Cultivating a crop, cultivating a strategy -- Great Britain and the Civil War -- Cotton and Confederate finance -- Procuring arms -- Cotton trading in the United States -- Cotton and the freedman -- pt. 5: The racial divide and cotton labor, 1865-1930. New era, old problems -- Ruling the freedmen in the cotton fields -- Reconstruction meets reality -- The black hand on the cotton boll -- From cotton field to urban ghetto : the Chicago experience -- pt. 6: Cotton without slaves, 1865-1930. King Cotton expands -- The controlling laws of cotton finance -- The delta plantation : labor and land -- The planter experience in the twentieth century -- The long-awaited mechanical cotton picker -- The abdication of King Cotton